Just twist! To be sure, the former Soviet Union is crawling with matreshka dolls, be they innocent and scarved or political (Lenin in Stalin in Brezhnev... all in the gullet of a stony-faced Putin; this particular set can be found at www.craftsofrussia.co.uk). In the last decade or two the matreshka has become multicultural: L.A. Laker matreshkas were popular in the 90's; I have a couple of Jewish klezmer matreshkas at home, bought in Odessa (clarinet in fiddle in accordion). But nobody understands the nesting doll better than a Russian, whose tiny babushka has been ever swallowed by greater forces.
So of course Matreshka should make a guest appearance in folk singer and choreographer Vladimir Devyatov's 2006 music video "Ia ogon, ty voda" (I'm fire, you're water). When opened by American characters of apparently increasing levels of social power, the doll becomes a folk-disco Pandora's box, the ultimate souvenir, offsetting American society from the courtyard janitors to the president. It's worth pointing out that the actors playing African American janitors are as unconvincingly American as the "dvor" in which most of the video takes place. The bizarre narrative is somehow at once complex and formulaic. (For more on the latter, take a look at some of the great work done by my friend Steven Lee.)
I doubt Devyatov had this in mind, but the soul of Russianness (marked here by ethnic music, costume and dance) that disrupts and exposes America's own social nesting dolls might be read as a new Slavic-centered version an old-fashioned Soviet suggestion that Leninism might disrupt the pattern of American racism. Compare this to Ivanov and Amalrik's 1933 Soviet cartoon "Chernoe i beloe" (Black and White), inspired by Mayakovsky. Even the costumes that open Devyatov's video take you back to the final Black-White confrontation in this haunting piece of Soviet animation. While both works are problematic, the older one is at least clear about its social message.
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